Select Works of Plotinus · 434 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor
Select Works, Section 412
Section 3 3. Yet, looking at another set of facts, reflection tells us that we are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering, overcome, at the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming attachments; and all this can be due only to some unity among us. Again, if spells and other forms of magic are efficient even at a distance to attract us into sympathetic relations, the agency can be no other than the one soul. A quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself heard at vast distances- proof of the oneness of all things within the one soul. But how reconcile this unity with the existence of a reasoning soul, an unreasoning, even a vegetal soul? [It is a question of powers]: the indivisible phase is classed as reasoning because it is not in division among bodies, but there is the later phase, divided among bodies, but still one thing and distinct only so as to secure sense-perception throughout; this is to be classed as yet another power; and there is the forming and making phase which again is a power. But a variety of powers does not conflict with unity; seed contains many powers and yet it is one thing, and from that unity rises, again, a variety which is also a unity. But why are not all the powers of this unity present everywhere? The answer is that even in the case of the individual soul described, similarly, as permeating its body, sensation is not equally present in all the parts, reason does not operate at every point, the principle of growth is at work where there is no sensation- and yet all these powers join in the one soul when the body is laid aside. The nourishing faculty as dependent from the All belongs also to the All-Soul: why then does it not come equally from ours? Because what is nourished by the action of this power is a member of the All, which itself has sensation passively; but the perception, which is an intellectual judgement, is individual and has no need to create what already exists, though it would have done so had the power not been previously included, of necessity, in the nature of the All.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The passage is fundamentally an argument for cosmic sympathy: humans suffer at the sight of others' pain, spells work at a distance, and all this is explained by 'the oneness of all things within the one soul.'
The doctrine that the divine is present within all things and the universe itself, pervading creation rather than remaining solely transcendent above it. Distinct from unity_of_being (the general claim that all existence is one substance, agnostic about whether that substance indwells its parts) and from kingdom_within (the divine present specifically IN THE INDIVIDUAL human, accessible without mediation) — divine_immanence is the general pervading-presence claim applied to all of creation, not a human-specific indwelling.
The soul is described as 'permeating its body' and the All-Soul as the source from which individual nourishing faculties depend, indicating the divine pervades all of creation.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
[auto] The passage explicitly details a downward flow from Unity to Intellectual Kosmos, then Souls, and finally sense forms.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The passage states that 'a quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself heard at vast distances' as proof of the soul's oneness, affirming the causal efficacy of the spoken word.